Fresh Start
by pygmypuff8
Summary: Due to emotional and physical upheaval at home, Hermione decides it's time for a change. Being the person that she is however, she can't wander aimlessly around the world having nothing to do. No, she had to have something challenging, and so she travels to Romania to begin her training as a dragon tamer, little knowing that her arrival would put into motion an ancient magic...
1. Chapter 1

**AN: Hello! Yes, I know I've been a little absent this month, and that I should be writing a new chapter for my other story Curiosity Killed the Cat, and I promise you it will be up within the next few days. But, I had to write this for a challenge, and I really enjoyed it. While it's completed for now, I will probably come back a bit later and finish it. Probably.**

**Okay, it's for the Hunger Games Competition on HPFC and for round three I used the prompts: Word: divert, emotion: ecstatic, Dialogue: "She's not going to be happy about that" (I changed a few pronouns and that to this, but I think it still counts), Setting: Dragon Reserve in Romania, Weapon: fire.**

**A million thank yous to my brilliant beta Littleoldmeeeee for betaing this even though it's not officially what I *hired* you for. You did an awesome job! **

**Enjoy and review please!**

**Disclaimer: Anything you recognise doesn't belong to me, obviously. **

**O.o.O.o.O.o.O**

Hermione panted heavily, putting her hands on her knees and bending forward as she finished the five-mile long run. Looking around at the other trainees, she was glad to see that she wasn't the only one who was woefully out of shape, though none of them looked quite as winded as she felt.

"Alright, gather 'round trainees!" their instructor, a big, heavily-muscled man with skin that looked as tough as leather, and a bushy moustache, called out. Gathering in a group around him with the rest of the trainees, Hermione wondered how a moustache was in any way practical, as he worked with dragons, and hair was very likely to catch fire. She herself had had to cut her bushy hair very short, so short that if you glanced quickly, without paying attention, you might mistake her for a boy.

Looking out over the exhausted-looking trainees, the big man, Balder, laughed and said, "that was just the warm up. If you can't handle that, then you have no business being here." Hermione made an effort to straighten up and get her breathing under control, and watched the other trainees attempt to do the same. She smiled slightly as she saw one young man, who looked so young he couldn't have been out of school for very long, attempt to hold his breath and stand up straight as Balder glanced at him, obviously trying to divert attention away from himself, only to give himself over to gasping breaths, supporting himself with his hands on to his knees, when Balder's gaze passed on.

When his assessing eyes landed on her, Hermione stood up straight and looked him straight in the eye, daring him to say something. He only grinned, and said, "that's better. Now, for the rest of the day, you'll be doing the kind of work that is usually given to dragon-tamers who misbehave. You'll be cleaning the nesting dragons' cages. And it has to be properly done, the mothers don't like dirty nests for their eggs, and then they might decide not to lay them and we won't have new dragons. We don't want that, do we? Or you'll be out of a job before you even get one. " He smiled widely, showing his yellow teeth, and waved a hand at the cages behind him, which were empty of dragons for the moment, but filled with soiled straw, and even from her position at the back of the group, Hermione could see the huge, old piles of dried dragon excrement. Her stomach rolled at the thought of cleaning that out.

"Well," Balder demanded, "what are you waiting for, get to it!" He pointed towards a shed where they found brooms, mops and scrubbing brushes, and Hermione went, feeling like a driven sheep, and nothing like the dragon tamer that she was training to be.

"Can we use magic?" the fair-haired boy Hermione had noticed before asked, clutching a broom the wrong way up and looking at it as if it were a very complicated piece of Arithmancy. Balder grinned a truly malicious grin, and said, "no. The dragons don't like any magic but their own imbued in their nesting areas, so you're gonna have to do it by hand." He grinned at them once more, before walking away,and calling over his shoulder, "happy cleaning!"

Hermione sighed, and tried to make her way over to the cage that looked like it was the least dirty, only to be shoved out of the way by a bigger man, who sneered at her as he walked into the area. She glared at his back and turned around to find the second cleanest one, only to see that all but one of the fourteen cages had a trainee in it, already busily working away, or, in some cases, trying to figure out which way up to hold a broom.

The only cage that remained was one that was set a little apart from the others, and even from where she stood, a good two hundred feet from it, she could smell the stench coming off of it. Cursing her small size for making her so easy to shove out of the way, Hermione made her way over to the last cage, pausing at the entrance to tie her scarf over her nose, in an attempt to block out the worst of the smell.

The cage was a mess. Dirty straw lay ankle deep on the floor, squelching unpleasantly when she stepped on it, making her glad that she had worn her dragon-hide boots today. Dragon excrement, large heaps of it, twirled into the characteristic spiral of the Chinese Fireball, (the first test that determined if you were good enough to be trained was a written test that, of course, Hermione had excelled at. She would be surprised if there were a dragon she couldn't recognise by excrement alone, not to mentions scales or eggs), seemed to be everywhere she looked. She narrowly avoided stepping in one while she tried to get to the pitchfork leaning against the wall.

Studying the mess, Hermione squared her shoulders, thanked her lucky stars that she was Muggleborn, or else she wouldn't have known the first thing about cleaning, (and she needed all her knowledge here), and began pitching forkfuls of straw into the barrel outside, which she thankfully did not have to replace each time it got full, as it seemed to empty itself as soon as she was worried that it was becoming too full.

The squishy dampness she had felt on first stepping onto the straw, turned out, thankfully, to be nothing more than a slowly leaking pipe on the floor of the cage, (which she only uncovered after an hour of pitching straw), that she quickly repaired with a patch she had found in the shed.

As she was pitching out the last of the straw, (most of the excrement went with it, being stuck to it. Hermione had never been so thankful in her life that she didn't have to scrub something), she hit something hard with the edge of the pitchfork. She frowned and carefully cleared the straw around the solid object, to reveal a black stone, which turned out to be a dragon egg as she looked closer.

She racked her brain, trying to remember which dragon lays black eggs, but the nearest thing she could come up with was the Japanese Firethrower who lays dark-blue eggs. This egg was definitely black however, and although she still had a way to go with cleaning the cage, she knew she couldn't just leave the egg there. So, tucking it under her arms, she walked out of her cage, ignoring the mutters of her fellow trainees, even Lisa, a black girl that had been fairly kind to her. Hermione ignored Lisa's shouts after her, "Balder's not going to be happy about this, come back, don't be a fool!" Instead, she made her way to the only person besides Lisa that she knew at this place: Charlie Weasley.

**O.o.O.o.O.o.O**

When she found him, having walked about for quite some time, asking after him and quickly ducking behind a tree to avoid Balder, it was already nearing dusk, and he had just finished wrestling a reluctant Green Dragon's jaw open to administer some medicine. Now, he was rubbing ointment onto a wound where the dragon's fire had burned him.

She waited in the deepening shadows until the other dragons tamers had walked away, before nearing him and touching his bare shoulder. He jumped up in surprise, whirling around and wincing as the burn on his side twisted, before recognising Hermione and relaxing. "Hermione, what are you doing here? What happened to your hair? Are you-" he glanced her up and down, "are you a trainee? Why?"

"Long story, and not important now." She brought out the egg from behind her back, watching as Charlie's eyes first narrowed in confusion, before his eyes widened in surprise, and he asked, a tinge of awe in his voice, "Hermione, were did you find this? Do you know what it is?"

"I found it in the nesting cage I was cleaning, and thought it best to let someone know right away."

He held out his hands, but hesitated and frowned, saying, "Why didn't you give it to your trainer then? Why did you come to me?"

Hermione blushed, looked down and said, "I, I didn't know where Balder was, and- and he didn't look like the type of person who would listen to a trainee!"

Charlie laughed, and Hermione flushed further. "Oh, now I understand. You've got Balder. I'll admit that he's downright horrid to the newbies, but once you finish training he really isn't all that bad. Just a little rough around the edges. Well, give it over, let's see whether it is what I think it is."

Hermione handed it over, and he held it gently in his hands, studying it before handing it back, and picking up his ointment again with a wide smile on his face. "It is, this is incredible!" he exclaimed, an awed look in his eyes as he stared at the egg.

"What is?" Hermione asked eagerly, staring down at the egg in her hands curiously.

"This egg is incredibly rare. So rare that some dragon tamers say it's a myth." He started applying the ointment again, drawing Hermione's attention to the burn, and she winced in sympathy at the cracked skin, but Charlie only smiled and said, "no worries. I've had worse. So will you if you if you finish your training." Thankfully, for Hermione was almost bouncing with impatient curiosity now, he continued his explanation without asking how she had ended up in training to be a dragon tamer in the first place. "It's said that a black egg will, if hatched correctly, give birth to a pure white dragon that spewslightening, not flames."

"Which dragon lays these eggs?"

"Nothing does, they just," he waved his hands about, "appear."

"How do you hatch it, then?" Hermione asked, now critically assessing the egg in her arms.

Charlie's face paled, and he said quickly, "Oh, no. You don't want to do that. They say that such a dragon cannot be controlled or tamed, and that it will wreak havoc on all around him. The only way to stop it is to kill it, and the only way to kill it is to find a way to redirect his lightening onto himself."

"But what was it-"

Footsteps hurried toward them, and Hermione hid the egg behind her back quickly, as Balder came into view, and gave an ecstatic grin, (one that made Hermione shiver in fear of all the unpleasantness it promised), when he saw her.

"Aha! Here she is! The trainee that walked off in the middle of cleaning! Think you're too good for us, do you? Well, now you get to clean all of the other cages as well. The other trainees didn't finish theirs, and you've hardly begun on yours, so off you go! Who needs sleep when they can just walk off whenever it pleases them."

Hermione glared at the ground as she followed him, glancing at Charlie as she left, to find him looking worriedly at the egg behind her back. When he saw her looking at him, he mouthed at her, "throw it away. Get rid of it."

Carefully, Hermione brought the egg out from behind her back and stared at it, trying to decide where to throw it, when she felt a pulse of warmth travel through the egg and up into her arms. An immense wave of affection for the egg hit her, and she felt nauseous as she thought of throwing it away. Charlie could say what he wanted, she wasn't throwing a dragon egg away.

"Stop dawdling girl, or do you want to feed the dragons as well?"

Hermione stuck the egg behind her back once more, and hurried on after Balder.


	2. Chapter 2

**AN: Yes, finally a second chapter, I know! I'm a bit flabbergasted as well. But, here it is, for the reviewers who asked me about it, and I hope it is okay for you. This chapter is mainly about Hermione's memories and what led to her being in Romania in the first place. I know some of you were hoping for more action, but I just felt that we had to get this out of the way first. Also, does the reasons for Hermione beginning dragon training sound realistic to you? Let me know please! Enjoy and review please!**

**Massive thanks to my beta Littleoldmeeeee who betaed this chapter while in the midst of revisions for exams. A thousand thank you's dear. **

**Disclaimer: Everything you recognise belongs to J. K. Rowling.**

**O.o.O.o.O.o.O**

Hermione was bone-tired, her head aching, and her eyes fighting to stay open. She had spent the whole night - literally until the sun had risen - cleaning out the cages.

She had finished her own with more than enough time to get a bit of sleep, but because of her punishment, (and Balder's threatening gaze just outside the cages, which was replaced at regular intervals throughout the night by other dragon tamers, who were sympathetic, but unrelenting), she had also had to clean all the other trainees' cages as well. Most of them had at least done a decent job in starting the process, and there wasn't much for Hermione to do, except to sweep up the last bits of dirt and replace the old straw. Of course, there were also those that had clearly not even tried, or had been so perplexed by the tools that they had ended up making the mess worse, causing that much more work for Hermione. She had almost growled out loud when she'd come to the first cage, the one that she had wanted to clean before being shoved out of the way, and found it in a worse state of messiness, and general disgustingness, than what it had been like in the first place. She honestly wouldn't have been surprised if the guy who had shoved her out of the way had simply flung stuff around to look like he was doing something.

All of the cleaning, however, was far too monotonous to hold Hermione's attention for long periods of time, and her mind began to wander - inevitably going back to the reason she had signed up for dragon training in the first place.

It had been hard, at first, acclimatizing herself to a normal life. As normal as life could be, for one Harry Potter's best friends at least. But, for the first time in what felt like forever, there were no threats to run from. There wasn't a mystery that absolutely had to be solved, and she didn't always have to be the girl with all the answers.

For the first few months, the freedom had been terrifying. She didn't know what to do. Sure, she had thought about what she would do when Voldemort was gone, dead, defeated, but it had been more hypothetical than realistic. At the time, she couldn't really conceive a future without the threat of Voldemort and his Death Eaters hanging over her, so every dream of the future had been tinged with a dreamlike quality. Pleasant, but not exactly reachable.

Then, suddenly, the war had been over, and she was free to do whatever she wished.

She had gone to see her parents first, anxious to see if the memory charm she had placed on them would be reversible. When creating the spell, she hadn't been able to improve on the fifty-fifty chances that they would get their memories back. Before she could tinker on it any more, her time was up, and she had had to cast the charm as it was.

She was devastated when it turned out the charm was irreversible.

Harry and Ron had been very sympathetic, with Ginny right there beside them, and Hermione had leaned heavily on them in the time following her heart-breaking discovery. Mrs. Weasley too, despite having lost a son (though she seemed determined to stay as cheerful as possible, even if Hermione had seen her, at moments when she thought nobody was looking, holding that blasted clock in her hands, where Fred's hand would forever be pointing to dead, with silent tears running down her face. Mrs. Weasley had removed the clock from the wall after Fred's death - Hermione suspected it was in order to not have that reminder on her kitchen wall every time she turned around), was very kind to Hermione, and made it abundantly clear that Hermione would always have a home with the Weasleys.

"Now, don't be silly Hermione. You're always welcome here. In fact, I would consider it an insult if you went anywhere else!" Mrs. Weasley had exclaimed, when Hermione expressed doubts about staying at the Burrow, and suggested instead getting a flat.

For the next few months, Hermione had worked on getting her N.E.W.T.S., failing to talk Ron in to taking any of his, but succeeding in getting Harry to take at least two of his: Defence Against the Dark Arts and Transfiguration.

After getting her N.E.W.T.S. (all of which had received Outstanding), she'd applied for a job in the Management of the Rights of Magical Creatures Department. She had got the job, of course, (she could've gotten it without taking her N.E.W.T.S., but she wouldn't have felt quite as deserving of it. Ron had taken full advantage of their honorary status as War-Heroes, and had been accepted into the Auror-programme almost instantly when he had applied. Because he hadn't taken his N.E.W.T.S. and had gotten into the programme earlier, he was now above Harry - something which he was very smug about. He was rather good at his job though, Hermione had to admit), but she didn't quite start at the bottom, courtesy of her status, and, Hermione liked to think, her excellent marks.

So, whilst a lot of things were strange, like being followed by cameramen and reporters everywhere, or the constant feeling of being unsafe, (some Death Eaters were still on the loose), things were generally better than they had been in years, and Hermione ought to have been perfectly content, if not perfectly happy.

Except, she wasn't.

At first, she had assigned the lingering niggling feeling of discomfort and discontent to nothing else but after-effects of the war, (she had been going to a therapist, something she was still trying to convince Harry and Ron, but especially Harry to do. Ginny had given in, finally, and she was now firmly on Hermione's side), and of her parents memory loss. She was still very sensitive about her parents, and sometimes the tiniest things could remind her of them, and she would have to find a quiet place immediately, to hide her tears. She was still keeping a distant eye on them, and it gave her some comfort to know that she would be notified immediately if something happened to either of them,

But after a while, that happened less and less, and though the nightmares of the war remained, (she didn't think they would ever truly go away), she was relatively free of their effects in her waking hours. Everything was going fine, except for that niggling feeling.

She managed to ignore it for two years, managed to avoid showing how restless and out of place she felt. She managed it at Harry and Ginny's wedding, where she was reminded yet again that she didn't have somebody in her life, since Ron was now dating Luna. (Around the same time, he had also quit his job as an Auror to become a professional Quidditch-player, which she personally thought was a mistake, but Ron was happy, really happy, and she couldn't say anything to ruin that). She had even managed it when George tried to kill himself, and he was kept in St. Mungo's mental ward for close to six months.

Then, three months ago, the message had come through. Her parents had died. Not in a magical way, which was what she had feared ever since she had really become involved in the fight against Voldemort and had realised how much danger her parents were in, but in a common car accident. It had been dark and stormy, the roads were wet, it was misty, and the other car hadn't seen her parents' car lights. The car had skidded and rolled on the road, her parents were killed on impact.

Everyone had been very sympathetic and kind; forgiving her when she had skipped Sunday lunch three times in a row, when she'd nearly bitten Harry's head off when he had tried to talk to her and even when she'd refused to go and see Ron's first real Quidditch game.

In retrospect, she thinks maybe that was part of the problem. Nobody had told her to snap out of it, to stop being such a baby and to get over herself. Granted, she wouldn't have said something like that to somebody who had just lost their parents either, but she had really needed that. Somebody to tell her to shape up.

When she was late to work for the third time in a week, her boss had called her in and asked her, very gently, if she would like some time off to deal with her parents' death. Irrationally, Hermione was angry, and she had spat out, "no. I quit." She had handed in her resignation that day, followed shortly by a letter of apology after she had cooled down.

She had told Harry, Ron and the Weasleys that she just needed to get away. Harry had offered to pay for her to tour Europe, but she had declined. She knew she just needed to get away, for a long time, and she knew she wouldn't be satisfied with doing nothing. So, she had signed up for dragon tamer training in Romania, passed the admission tests with flying colours, (she was surprised when she saw how many people showed up for the tests, and even more surprised when she saw how little of them actually passed. It wasn't that hard of a test, honestly. You only had to study), and now here she was, cleaning nesting cages.

She swept out the last of the dirty straw from the final cage, and heaved a sigh of relief. She was done.

She looked up at Balder, who had taken over from the last dragon tamer about an hour ago and was leaning against the outside of the cage, and asked him in a small voice, "I guess I can't go to sleep now, can I?"

She expected Balder to sneer and laugh at her, but instead, she got a smile, still a little mocking but not downright cruel, and he answered, "well, this was your punishment, but seeing the good job you did here, I think you can skip the morning jog and get a bit of shut-eye. I'll send someone over to get you when we're done."

Hermione smiled gratefully. Although she wouldn't get more than an hour of sleep at the most, she knew that Balder didn't have to excuse her from jogging, and the fact that he had was a miracle in itself. "Thank you!"

His rare good mood seemed to have disappeared with the first rays of light peeking over the edge of the horizon, and he scowled and said, "Well, what're you waiting for? Off you go! I'm not gonna give you more time t' sleep."

She turned around (she had barely remembered to snatch the egg and tuck it under her arm) and smiled to herself as she walked, (she would've run had she had the energy, but she just didn't), towards the dormitory where the trainees slept. At first, she had been horrified to discover that the males and females roomed together, especially seeing as there were only five girls and nine males. She got used to it pretty quickly however. When you were tired and dirty, desperate for a bed and a shower you didn't really care who saw you, and the bathrooms were communal as well. She slumped into the room just as people were beginning to wake up.

She ignored their stares and whispers as they saw her and just fell down on to her bed, not even caring that she was still in her dirty clothing and likely getting her sheets dirty. She just wanted to sleep.

A hand shook her shoulder and she heard Lisa's voice asking her, "Where've you been? I've been worried about you! And what's that black stone you've got there?"

Startled awake by Lisa's question about the egg, Hermione sat up and pushed the egg quickly in to the suitcase she kept under her bed, amazed that she had been carrying it all the way to the dormitory - right in front of Balder! She must have been more tired than she thought. Hopefully, he, like Lisa, thought it was just a stone.

"Oh, it's nothing. Just something that I picked up. Balder sent me here to sleep for a while, until you finish the morning run, then I have to come back. I had to clean all the cages last night as punishment."

Lisa winced. "Ouch. Bet that wasn't pleasant. Well, I've got to run. Literally. I'll make sure somebody actually comes and gets you when we finish jogging. Wouldn't want Balder to give you even more punishments, would you?"

Hermione smiled gratefully and shook her head as Lisa grinned at her, before hurrying to follow the other trainees outside, her wildly curly hair bouncing around her head, only to be secured by a hair band as she flew out the door.

She sank down on to her bed and closed her eyes, asleep almost before her head touched her pillow, too tired to even worry about the egg, the strange warm feeling she felt earlier, or what Balder had possibly seen.


End file.
